


I would have followed you

by Yuu_chi



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Medical Trauma, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:27:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1520999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi disappears one night without a word or a goodbye - just the sound of the door shutting behind him and the start of years of agony and confusion.</p><p>Three years later and two thousand miles away Eren finds him again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I would have followed you

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: This fic is on a hiatus for the time being. I expect to pick it up again once my primary ereri multichapter has been finished. Thank you so much for all your support, and I hope you continue to read then.

They’d been together five years and engaged two when Levi walks out the door one evening without a word and vanishes into the darkness with only the clink of the door shutting behind him to let Eren know he’d left at all.

He doesn’t come back.

The next months are a series of whirlwind police inquiries and missing posters. He spends increasing amounts of time on Mikasa or Armin’s couch because his apartment feels too empty with only one person and the right side of his bed is cold enough to keep him awake at night.

“Are you sure he just didn’t get cold feet about your impending marriage, Mr Jaeger?” An officer asks tiredly one day when Eren stops by the station the sixth morning in a row to catch up on the complete lack of news. “It wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened in his past.”

It’s true in technicality only – that Levi had a record of skipping out on jobs and moving all over America in the years of his life before he met Eren. Things that Eren only knows because they’re numbers on a page, records of a different Levi entirely from the one that shares his bed every night and fell just as deeply in love with Eren as he had fallen for him – that much Eren is sure of.

The only reason that the officer drops the subsequent assault charges after Eren breaks his nose is because Erwin takes him aside and has a word or two, dropping frankly terrifying legal jargon that has been known to make grown men cry.

Eren is too exhausted to even thank him.

Six months becomes eight and eight becomes a year – the time stretches and stretches like tightened elastic until Eren is waiting for the inevitable snap; the moment of release and the pain that follows.

Just a body, Eren thinks one night as he climbs into the bed that feels too cold wearing a shirt of Levi’s that used to be too small before the stress had pulled the weight from Eren’s body like water to a drain. That’s all I ask; just let them find a body.

It’s been nearly two years and Eren can’t even make himself feel sorry for wishing that Levi would just fucking turn up already, dead or alive. Eren loves the man like burning, loves him like he’d never known he could, loves him so much sometimes he can barely breathe – but he can’t do this forever. He needs closure, he needs to know whether he should be waiting or mourning.

That night Eren tries to cry himself to sleep and nearly laughs instead when he can’t even do that properly because he’s pretty sure he ran out of tears a year ago.

At two years Eren goes back to work.

A routine develops:

He gets up in the morning, showers and puts on Levi’s cologne before sitting down and forcing himself to stomach some dry toast as he packs his bag, dropping by the police station on his way to work. Marco tells him there’s no news and offers him a coffee which Eren politely declines. He works until six in the evening, stops by Mikasa’s and sits blankly at the dinner table with both her and Armin and obligingly eats whatever is put in front of him with no interest or attention. He goes home, sprays more of Levi’s cologne on the sheets and sleeps with his arms tight around a pillow and a lump high in his throat.

It’s horrible – it feels like Eren’s experiencing the world through a shroud of fog so thick he can’t even breathe – but it keeps him alive and that’s all he can ask for at this point.

One-thousand and thirty-six days after Levi walked out the door Eren gasps awake so loudly and suddenly his head spins. It takes a moment to realize it’s the ringing of the phone on the nightstand beside him that has woken him.

“Hello?” He rasps into the receiver, his heart beating sickly against his ribcage.

“Eren? It’s Detective Bodt,” Marco says.

Eren sits up straighter in bed and all quite suddenly his skin feels sticky against the sheets and his vision blacks out. There hasn’t been a midnight call for nearly two years. “Yes. I mean, yes, I know who it is. What is it? Have you got news for me?”

It’s silent for a moment and Eren swears he can count the uneven thumping of his heart to each second that drags by.

“We’ve found him,” Marco says.

Eren thanks him – doesn’t hear a single other word he says as he numbly assures him that he’ll be at the station in a matter of minutes.

He hangs up the phone and buries his face in his hands.

For the first time in years, Eren cries.

.

Eren and Levi had moved to Colorado after a little under a year of dating to be closer to Eren’s friends and family. Levi had none and everybody Eren knew lived in the sleepy town he’d grown up in; it only seemed right to go back.

They’d met in New York – the state not the capital – where Eren had been waiting tables in an effort to prove his independence and Levi had been dirt-poor and on the verge of giving up on everything.

It was a match made in heaven – the angry kid who couldn’t even legally drink and came into work every day with fresh scrapes on his face and blood on his knuckles and the scary looking guy who spent up to four hours a day sitting in the back booth and ordering nothing but coffee that he let go cold in his hands, looking with a thousand-yard stare out the window.

Eren can’t honestly recall their first real conversation – or their second and third – but he does remember looking up one morning from scrubbing a table and realizing that he couldn’t ever recall not seeing Levi sitting in that booth cradling a mug in his hands like it was something precious.

They move in together after the third date much to the astonishment of everybody even remotely involved in Eren’s life and then to Colorado several months later, tossing their sparse belongings in the boot of Eren’s car and driving off without a backwards glance.

They’d lived in Colorado ever since – had never moved or vacationed – and yet nobody can explain how Levi had gone from a rickety house with a mortgage they’d never pay off  in Colorado to a hospital in Maine right near the Canadian border.

Eren spends the whole flight over feeling like he’s going to throw-up even though he’s never been travel sick a day in his life. It’s only the calming feeling of Marco’s fingers threaded through his and his voice talking him gently though the feeling that keeps him grounded – he doesn’t hear a word he says, but the gentle roll of his voice manages to stop him from having a complete breakdown.

(Marco had taken over the case about the time Eren broke the other lead officer’s nose and the pair of them had bonded quickly. Marco’s husband had gone missing in Afghanistan for a stretch while on deployment so for once Eren had somebody who understood what he was going through.)

When the plane lands Eren’s escorted into a squad car and Marco doesn’t let go of his hand once – not even when the other police officers look at their interlocked fingers with raised eyebrows – and Marco just calmly but coolly verbally shreds them both because Levi has been missing so long by now that any sighting of him at all should have reached Eren months ago.

The drive is silent but for Marco softly filling Eren in on what to expect.

“He’s been in a coma for the last six months apparently, I don’t know the details unfortunately, only the basics. I know he woke up only a handful of weeks ago, but there have been some lingering effects of the time he spent asleep.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Eren asks and it’s possibly the first time he’s spoken since the midnight phone call and he’s vaguely aware that he’s probably crushing Marco’s fingers. “What happened? Where has he been? Where was he before the hospital? What –.”

Marco cuts him off with a silent shake of his head, firm but sympathetic. “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything yet, I just know that an officer visiting the hospital recognized his face last night. But I think… I think you should probably prepare yourself for the worst.”

Eren has been preparing himself for years to find Levi dead or dying – he’s been at the game of ‘be prepared’ for longer than he can hope to explain. To find Levi alive – to find Levi well and whole – is a whole something else that Eren never even stopped to consider.

“Yeah,” he says instead but he knows Marco understands by the way he squeezes his fingers gently.

Pulling in at the hospital and getting out of the car happens much too fast – Eren is barely aware of Marco helping him out the passenger door, of being walked through the front visitor entrance flanked by officers at both sides.

It doesn’t feel real. Nothing feels real.

I’m going to see Levi again, Eren thinks to himself for no other reason than to test how it sounds in his head. He finds that he can’t even form the words without his brain shutting them down. Eren has done everything humanely possible over the last few years to keep himself from false hope and he doesn’t think he’s going to truly believe anything until he can see Levi with his own eyes, touch him with his own two hands.

He doesn’t even remember the colour of his eyes anymore.

There’s a set of people in white waiting for them by the front desk.

“So I take it you’re Eren Jaeger?” Someone asks him.

“That’s me,” Eren says unnecessarily and before anybody can stop him, before he can stop himself, he blurts out words so quick they bleed together. “Is he okay? Can I see him? What happened? Please, can someone tell me why the fuck my fiancé has been missing for nearly three years?”

Marco’s rubbing his thumb soothingly along the back of Eren’s hand but he doesn’t stop Eren’s verifiable word vomit, not even when the doctor blinks bewilderedly at them.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure about the circumstances prior to his arrival, but he was escorted to our emergency room November last year. It appeared like he’d been involved in a car accident of some sort – we’re not sure of the facts. His injuries are consistent with being in the driver’s side of a vehicle during impact.”

A car accident. The only car they had between them was Eren’s old jeep which was still sitting in their driveway back home.

The look on his face must clue Marco in that Eren is about to have a serious breakdown any moment. “Sorry, but is it possible that we hurry this along? Can Eren see him first and then could we perhaps discuss the situation?”

The head doctor hesitates visibly and exchanges a wary glance with a nurse and Eren’s heart goes into overdrive.

“What? What’s wrong?” He aggressively demands, shushing Marco impatiently when he looks like he’s about to step in. “What aren’t you telling me? Is there something wrong with Levi?”

Something squeaks loudly behind him and Eren turns around whip quick and feels his mouth instantly go dry and his knees buckle.

It’s Levi; white as a sheet and draped in a spotted blue hospital gown with his hand wrapped tight around the stand of his IV drip which he has apparently dragged from his room like a stubborn child.

He’s looking right at Eren.

Silver, Eren thinks deliriously. His eyes are silver.

“John,” The doctor behind him says and the name is unfamiliar enough that something twitches deep inside Eren, “There’s somebody I’d like you to meet.”

Levi’s gaze flickers to the doctor and back to Eren again and his face is completely expressionless but Eren barely notices because he can’t tear his eyes away from the contours of Levi’s face.

He’s so beautiful – even with the bags beneath his eyes and the pallor to his skin and yes, even the ridiculous fucking hospital gown – and Eren hasn’t seen him in so long that everything else ceases to matter.

His fingers slip from Marco’s for the first time since they boarded the plane and Eren’s legs wobble as he takes a step forward.

“Levi,” he says and it comes out like a benediction.

Levi looks right at him with ice grey eyes, fingers wrapped tight around his IV stand and asks: “Who the fuck are you?”

.

Doctor Hanji’s office is warm and comforting and she smiles a good deal more than the doctor that had greeted them out in the hall but it’s all rather lost on Eren who can barely feel the cool press of the chair beneath his jeans.

“This has been handled so poorly and I’d like to issue an official apology on behalf of the hospital,” Hanji says, peering over her desk at Eren with earnest eyes. “There will be a serious investigation into why no official police report was filed on John – sorry, I mean Levi – and any and all parties responsible will be disciplined accordingly.”

A year ago those words would have been exactly what Eren needed to hear – he would have stormed his way through the hospital to find every last person who had kept him from Levi all of this time and made them really feel the pain he’s been through.

So it’s funny how little he cares right now.

“What can you tell us about Levi’s condition?” Marco asks for him, neither accepting nor declining the apology but leaving it just to hang in the air. Hanji winces but recovers in record time.

“He was in a coma for six months following his admittance here. We have no information on what happened, but his injuries are consistent with car crash victims.” She taps two slender fingers against her temple. “Levi had a severe skull fracture – it looked like he’d struck his head against the steering wheel during the collision. The result of this is what we call Traumatic Brain Injury.”

There’s a laugh bubbling up inside Eren that he can barely contain. “Traumatic Brain Injury?” He repeats.

“It’s when –.”

“I know what it is,” Eren interrupts angrily. “My father is a doctor and my mother was killed in a hit and run when I was nine. I know more than my fair share about TBI.”

Hanji eyes him carefully. “It was very touch and go for a while. Levi had a score of other injuries to be dealt with and there were several nights where I was sure he was going to pass. Eventually he slipped into a coma and remained that way for several months. He’s only been fully conscious for a handful of weeks. That he’s been able to make this much progress since then is astounding, Mr Jaeger, I don’t think you fully understand.”

“But he doesn’t remember me,” Eren says and he knows it sounds selfish as it comes out of his mouth, knows that it sounds like he’s completely disregarding all the advancements Levi has made after something so devastating, but it’s the only thing he can think of. “We were going to get married and now he doesn’t even remember me.”

Marco rests a hand on his shoulder and squeezes it gently.

“Levi’s brain has not only gone through severe trauma, but also six months of inactivity,” Hanji says gently. “You need to give him time. He doesn’t remember much at the moment – pieces and bits of his personality – but you must understand, he doesn’t even remember himself right now. His amnesia is predominantly retrograde, but there has been some evidence of anterograde amnesia manifesting itself too. That is to say that his brain is having trouble forming new memories as well as retaining past ones.”

“So not only do I no longer have my past memories with him, but I’m not allowed to make new ones either?” Eren can’t help it, he laughs – a harsh whistling sound like he’s choking. “This is bullshit. This is such bullshit.”

Hanji takes his hand across the desk and Eren’s been holding more hands today than he has in years. “I’m just warning you – it’s happening less and less frequently as his brain repairs itself – but there are going to be moments where he’s going to repeat himself or where he won’t remember something that happened only a day or so ago. That’ll change in time – it all will – but it’s not going to be easy to start with.”

Eren feels sick. A slow coiling in his stomach like something deep inside of him is unravelling too fast for him to keep up. There’s a bitter taste like blood and bile on his tongue.

Hanji keeps talking, big medical words that Eren hasn’t heard since he was ten trying to pronounce the type twelve font of his father’s medical books – and he can’t – he just can’t.

“Excuse me,” he blurts, bolting to his feet and only faintly hearing the distant rattle of his chair skidding backwards into the wall as he dashes from the room before he’s sick all over the nice oak of Hanji’s desk.

Hospitals are walls of rooms; fluorescent lights that make Eren dizzy as he fumbles his way into the closest bathroom with fingers that are slippery against the doorjamb, nearly tripping over his untied shoelaces as he manages to bang open a cubicle and sink to his knees just in time.

The floor is sticky and Eren feels it beneath the ratty knees of his jeans although most of his brainpower is dedicated to hurling unattractively into the toilet bowl, fingers gripping tight on porcelain like he’s holding on for dear life which, Eren admits, he just might be.

Levi doesn’t remember anything. Levi doesn’t remember him.

Eren might not be suffering the kind of brain trauma Levi is but he’s not entirely sure how much more he can take before he breaks completely and irreversibly.

Eren coughs, shuddering as the roiling of his stomach slows and he feels like he can pull back, reaching up to flush the toilet with shaking fingertips before easing himself to slump like a fucking bum against the cubicle walls even though he’s about ninety percent certain that he’s probably going to get tetanus if he stays on the floor much longer but really he can’t bring himself to care.

He’s having an emotional crisis on the disgusting bathroom floor of a hospital two thousand miles from home with the taste of puke on his tongue and tears burning his eyes.

“You look like shit,” somebody says and it’s been nearly three years but Eren recognizes that voice and when he opens his eyes he’s not even surprised.

Levi’s leaning near the bathroom door – sans drip this time, and Eren is vaguely irritated about Levi’s lack of ability to look after himself – with his arms crossed over his chest and looking at Eren like he’s a particularly disgusting bug.

It’s not a new look on him and rather than making Eren feel uncomfortable it just restarts that bone deep yearning again.

Eren tries to open his mouth to reply but his throat feels dry and gross. Instead he shrugs, expecting Levi to maybe wrinkle his nose at him and curse him out for treating a restroom like his own personal throne.

Instead what comes out of his mouth is an almost bored sounding: “So, you’re my fiancé. Or so they tell me.”

Eren stiffens instantly. “Sorry,” he says without knowing exactly what he’s apologizing for.

Levi doesn’t say anything immediately, watching Eren’s reactions with a purposefully blank face. “I’ll grant you it’s a bit fucking overwhelming to go from being called John Smith and barely remembering to feed myself most days to discovering my name’s actually goddamn French and I’m engaged to a literal fucking kid ten years younger than me – but it’s not something I need your shitty apology for.”

Eren’s not sure what part of that little speech he should be reacting to. Part of him feels like he should be apologizing again – regardless of what Levi says on the matter – and another part of him feels like he should be relieved that Levi obviously hasn’t changed that much.

What winds up sticking with him though is the name. “John Smith?”

Levi snorts and unfolds himself from the wall. “It was either that or John Doe and I didn’t fancy wearing a dead man’s name.”

Eren is barely twenty-five years old and he’s adult enough to admit that hearing Levi wearing Erwin’s last name when he was meant to be wearing Eren’s disturbs something deep inside of him.

“Your best friend’s name is Erwin Smith,” Eren says and watches Levi’s eyebrows climb.

“Well, would you look at that,” he marvels. “I really don’t give a shit right now. Get off the fucking floor; you look like a homeless bum who just overdosed on heroine.”

Eren offers him a weak smile and scratches his fingers idly through his hair. “Sorry, just… just give me a moment. You’re not the only one a bit overwhelmed right now.”

“Maybe so,” Levi allows, kicking absently at the grout between the floor tiles with one slippered foot. “But at least you didn’t have to reteach yourself how to walk a month ago.”

Eren’s too tired and too messed up already to even feel ashamed that he made Levi remember something like that. “Yeah,” he says without any real sympathy because if Levi thought for a moment he was pitying him Eren could probably kiss his chances at fixing their train-wreck of a relationship goodbye. “Sucks to be you.”

Levi doesn’t laugh exactly, but the corner of his mouth twitches in a heart achingly familiar suppression of a smile.

“They didn’t tell me you were a mouthy little shit,” he observes wryly.

Eren smiles weakly. “You called me that the first time we met, too.”

Eren’s saved from having to hear Levi reply to that particular slip of information as the door to the bathroom bangs open with more force than is probably necessary and a very out of breath Hanji looms at the threshold.

“Oh my god, I have no trouble believing you two are an item,” she wheezes, clutching a little at her shirtfront like she can’t get her heart to stop galloping away from her – a feeling Eren is more than familiar with. “You,” she hisses, pointing at Levi who doesn’t look the least bit repentant, “are meant to be in bed acting like a good brain trauma patient and not moving around without permission.”

Levi shrugs. “You all but fucking ditched me in my room and flounced off to talk about my life without inviting me. So fuck you sideways and see if I give a shit.”

Hanji scowls at him but evidently can’t find it within herself to refute this for she turns to look accusingly at Eren. “And you shouldn’t just go barging off without giving us two words about what was going on.”

“Excuse the fuck out of you,” Eren snaps and he’s more than slightly aware that it’s probably Levi’s influence that’s making him so stand-offish. “Sorry I didn’t stop to let you know I planned on puking half my guts up, my mistake.”

Behind Hanji Marco makes a noise at the back of his throat like he wants to intervene but really doesn’t at the same time. Hanji herself just looks between Eren and Levi for a moment before glancing skywards and sighing.

“Okay, enough. Levi, you need to get to bed – No.” She cuts him off firmly as he waspishly opens his mouth to argue, but even Eren can see he looks a degree or two paler than before and more than slightly unsteady on his feet. “Even though you’re determined to act like you’re invincible you are still my patient and you’ve had more than enough excitement for today.”

Levi looks for a moment like he’s about to argue still, glancing at Eren from the corner of his eye – and Eren wants nothing more than for him to never look away – before reluctantly conceding with an irritated shrug.

Hanji let out a sigh of relief before backing out of the doorway slightly to let a frankly terrified nurse through to wrap slender fingers about Levi’s wrist and guide him to the door only for Levi to hesitate briefly and cast an unreadable gaze back at Eren who is still slumped on the ground.

“Eren will be here in the morning,” Hanji says softly and Eren’s mouth admittedly runs a little dry that Levi wants him here even without things like memories or love.

Levi scoffs but doesn’t contradict her, and shuffles his way out of the room with minimal assistance and only one backwards cast glance - and if Eren’s blood runs a little cold at the thought of letting Levi leave his sight it’s only because the last time he did he lost him entirely.

“Eren,” Hanji says as the door swings shut behind Levi, she and Marco advancing slightly into the room. She eyes him like an injured stray. “Are you feeling okay?”

The correct answer here is no. Of fucking course Eren’s not feeling okay.

“Fine,” he lies blatantly and it’s more than obvious that nobody in the room believes him, himself included.

“Look, we can set up accommodation for you tonight until we can figure out what the standard protocol is for this situation,” Hanji says softly but Eren’s already shaking his head.

“Give me a chair and let me camp out in Levi’s room and I’ll be fine,” he insists.

“Eren,” Marco says. “You’re exhausted. You need some sleep.”

“What I need is for my partner of eight fucking years now – if we’re counting the time he’s spent missing – to not leave my side until I’m sure I’m not just dreaming this whole thing,” Eren snaps, and he knows he’s being unfair, that Hanji is the last person he should be taking out his frustration on but Eren’s so close to just breaking down and crying at this point and dealing with emotions has never exactly been his forte.

Hanji eyes him for a moment. “Okay, if you really want to stay with Levi I don’t have a problem with it, I suppose. But I don’t think this is a healthy coping mechanism, Eren.”

Eren snorts and finally manages to shuffle himself upright with the aid of a wall. “My coping mechanism for the past three-odd years has been not coping so I’d say this is an improvement.”

Hanji’s mouth settles into a grim line. “Things are only going to get harder from here on out,” she says bluntly, “and if you want the both of you to pull through this in one piece you’re going to have to find a way to cope that doesn’t involve running yourself into the ground.”

Privately Eren agrees – has heard the same lecture a thousand times from Mikasa and Armin in the last few years – but right now with his hands still shaking and the smell of bathroom and sick around him all he really wants is to never have to think about anything else but Levi ever again.

“A chair and Levi’s room,” Eren repeats, firmer this time, and Hanji does nothing but sigh at him as she turns to leave.

Eren takes it as a victory.

 

**Author's Note:**

> There's no amnesia tag because I didn't want to go and spoil the fun for all you poor souls who I already traumatize enough as it is. 
> 
> The title is from the song 'Say Something' which has always resounded quite a lot for me with this pairing and then more and more with this fic as it it progressed from an idea to reality.


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